Barebone Names

Chastity, Credence, and Modesty may have seemed like strange names to viewers of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but they are rooted in the Barebone family’s Puritan past. Not only is the Barebones’s church named for Salem, Massachusetts, but also the family seems to be descended from Bartholomew Barebone, an anti-magic no-maj with roots in early Puritan colonists in North America. Rowling writes about this in her “History of Magic in North America” on Pottermore.

Overtly-pious sounding names like Verity and Abstinence were common among Puritans. One plentiful source of peculiar Puritan names was a real-life family with the surname Barebone. A particularly notable member of this family was the Puritan Preacher and Member of Parliament Praise-God Barebone, who lent his name to the Barebone Parliament – which immediately preceded the beginning of Britain’s time as a Puritan-run Protectorate.

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